- Nearly 70 Pizza Hut restaurants and more than 10 pizza delivery outlets have closed after the company behind its UK business fell into administration. Sixty eight restaurants across the country have closed with immediate effect as well as 11 delivery sites according to FTI Consulting LLP, following its appointment as joint administrators of DC London Pie Limited, a franchise operator of Pizza Hut dine-in restaurants across the UK, delivery outlets and the master franchise for Pizza Hut dine-in operations in the Republic of Ireland.
- The team behind Soho super pub The Devonshire are heading to Covent Garden for their next venue. Westminster Council has approved a licence application by Charlie Carroll, the Flat Iron founder and operator behind The Devonshire, and Capital and Counties Ltd to transform the six-storey Georgian building located on Bedford Street into a hospitality venue.
- Argentine-themed restaurant group Gaucho is cutting the share of the service charge its waiters receive. From 1 October existing waiters will receive between 25.45% and 29.4% of the service charge collected at tables they have served, depending on length of service, down from 37% previously – already a reduction from 45% early last year. Bar staff will get 17% of the service charge, down from 20%. Gaucho says the new Tronc distribution, which has been set by the independent Troncmaster following industry benchmarking across its employees, takes into consideration all its front and back of house colleagues delivering customer experience in its restaurants and describes it as an ‘equitable solution for all of our excellent people’.
- A restaurant in Highgate has hit out at the local community, blaming its lack of support is behind its closure. Don Ciccio Osteria Italiana, located on Hampstead Lane, has closed after six years and accused the community of Highgate and its neighbours for never supporting it. An impassioned message on the restaurant’s website says the restaurant, which opened in October 2019, has closed ‘due to a lack of customers’ and went on to blame local residents for the closure.
Soho House founder Nick Jones will open a 90-room hotel above his Corner Shop 180 deli and café along the Strand next year. The St. Clement Hotel, which marks Jones’s first hotel project outside the Soho House brand since he stepped away as CEO of the private members’ club group in 2022, will also feature a rooftop restaurant, a gym, and 15 apartments.
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